Rogers: Greenwald illegally sold docs

A top lawmaker argued Tuesday that journalist Glenn Greenwald is illegally selling stolen material by asking news organizations to pay for access to U.S. intelligence secrets taken from the National Security Agency.

“For personal gain, he’s now selling his access to information, that’s how they’re terming it…. A thief selling stolen material is a thief,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) told journalists after a hearing where the leaks set in motion by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. were a major topic of discussion.

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Rogers said the information about the documents being for sale by Greenwald came from “other nations’ press services.”

During the hearing on global threats to U.S. interests, Rogers raised the issue repeatedly, referring to “discussions of selling access to this material to both newspaper outlets and other places.”

“To the best of your knowledge, fencing stolen material — is that a crime?” he asked FBI Director James Comey.

“It would be,” in most cases, Comey said. However, he quickly added that it would be “complicated” in a situation where the person selling that information was engaged in a newsgathering activity because of “First Amendment implications.”

“If I’m a newspaper reporter for fill-in-the-blank and I sell stolen material, is that legal because I’m a newspaper reporter?” asked Rogers, who did not mention Greenwald by name during the hearing but made the reference to him clear later in response to reporters’ questions.

“If you’re a newspaper reporter and you’re hawking stolen jewelry, it’s still a crime,” Comey said, before adding that the issue of a journalist selling access to information was “a harder question.”

Comey indicated that he was reluctant to speak in detail about Snowden’s case since the FBI has an active investigation into that matter.

When Rogers asked if that probe encompassed the possibility that “accomplices” of Snowden were brokering stolen information, Comey replied: “We are looking at the totality of circumstances around the stolen information.”

Greenwald, an American journalist and lawyer working until recently for Britain’s Guardian newspaper, firmly denied selling any of Snowden’s documents. In an interview with POLITICO, the writer said he has helped prepare stories based on the documents in various news outlets under typical freelance contracts.

“I’m never selling documents,” Greenwald said, adding that he makes the freelance arrangements so that prosecutors can’t accuse him of being a source rather than a reporter. “What they’re trying to do is to remove it from the realm of journalism, so that they can then criminalize it,” he said.

Greenwald has said he has access to a trove of documents from Snowden, most or all copied while by him working at an NSA facility in Hawaii. Stories based on those files have been appearing in news outlets worldwide.

In testimony Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper fueled the notion that journalists or others could face prosecution for working with Snowden. He did so by also referring to those individuals as “accomplices.”

“Snowden claims that he’s won and that his mission is accomplished. If that is so, I call on him and his accomplices to facilitate the return of the remaining stolen documents that have not yet been exposed to prevent even more damage to U.S. security,” Clapper said, repeating comments he made last week at a parallel Senate hearing.

Snowden faces charges of disclosing national defense information, disclosing communications intelligence secrets and theft of government property, according to the cover page of a criminal complaint made public in June.

The details of the charges remain sealed. However, there have been no indications that anyone else has been charged in connection with the disclosures.